My Name: Matthew Sanborn Smith. My challenge: Write 1000 stories by the time I'm 50 years old. Current story count: 160. Current age: 48. (Yes, I know it will never happen. I push on regardless.)
The One-Thousand is made up of stories that are aimed at publication in professional venues.
I've been published at Tor.com, Nature, and Chizine, among others. Listen to me on the occasional StarShipSofa and every single Beware the Hairy Mango. Shoot me an e-mail at upwithgravity@gmail.com

Thursday, March 29, 2012

I wanted to record Mango 100 today but both The Boy's voice and my own are jacked up due to sickness. Yes, he's going to be in it and so is his sister. But don't remember this in case it falls through.

Saw a beautiful movie called Somewhere with the daughter. She hated it. She claimed nothing happened. Don't listen to her. She's the one who picked it out and she can't remember why. I just wanted to see it because it was a Sofia Coppola film. It was my second and Sofia's two for two. Looking forward to three.

Here's some advice for the writers out there. It's one of those obvious things that we still need to be reminded of from time to time. You non-writers can probably get something out of it too:

Don't waste your time reading work that doesn't excite you. Don't waste your time writing what doesn't excite you. You don't have nine hundred years here. Get to the good stuff.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

It's one of those days when I've got nothing that needs to be done and I can just sit and write and yet I can't do more than a half hour's worth of work without having to get up and distract myself. It's what I call the itchy mind. I went to get help for this years ago, figuring I had ADD or something. Turns out I did and my psychiatrist threw in some depression there as well, which made sense. The good news was there were meds for that; One drug which handled both, which made me wonder if they're related. The bad news was that the meds took away my desire to write. I chose to drop them. I'd rather be fucked up and getting some work done than happy and getting no work done.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

I posted a link to the audio for this story a couple of years back but since The Moth just released the video, I wanted to tell you about it again. Jerry Stahl is funny as hell. I think this was the first Moth story I heard and it made me a permanent fan.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Moebius passed away today. If you're familiar with Heavy Metal - either the magazine or the first movie - you're familiar with his work. I'm grabbing things for this post by way of posts from Neil Gaiman, Jimmy Palmiotti and Scott Edelman. I would loved to have seen his Dune on the big screen. I first read about it in Twilight Zone magazine just before Lynch's version hit. Here's a little article with some beautiful art from Edelman's wonderful mag, Science Fiction Age. And below is a great and inspiring (to me) documentary, In Search of Moebius.

My natural state is brokety-broke, but I had a nice influx of dough last week, tax refund and an insurance refund. Paid off a credit card and another bill and caught up on some others and spent a little something on myself. When I was a kid, say eleven and twelve, The Beatles were like a religion to me. Honestly, you wouldn't have wanted to spend time with me. I actually got the words "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" embroidered in big letters on the back of my windbreaker. Total douche. Anyway when high school rolled up, I moved onto other things like Black Sabbath and masturbation and put The Beatles aside. I had pretty much ODed on them anyway. I still dig a little Beatles here and there, but I didn't own the music anymore. So with said dough in hand, I downloaded The Beatles Box Set from iTunes. To put it in metric figures, this set equals 1 assload of Beatles music, Pretty much everything a fan who has a life outside of The Beatles would ever want to own.